Sudan Resolved to Lift Fuel Subsidies Amid Riots, Minister Says

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Sudan’s government will press ahead
with the removal of fuel subsidies, Information Minister Ahmed
Bilal Osman said, even as the austerity measures spark deadly
street protests and opposition from some ruling party members.

The Sept. 23 announcement of planned increases in the costs
of gasoline and public transportation triggered unrest across
the East African country. Marchers in the capital of Khartoum
chanted slogans against President Umar al-Bashir yesterday,
suggesting that the protests are evolving into a broader
outburst against his leadership.

“There’s no way the government will consider canceling
recent economic measures,” Osman said in in a telephone
interview today from Khartoum. “This is the only remedy for the
economy.”

Bashir’s cabinet blames fuel subsidies for accelerating
inflation and damaging the economy. Their removal will increase
the cost of gasoline to 14 pounds ($3.17) a gallon from 8
pounds, while pushing public transport tariffs 26 percent
higher. Sudan’s per capita income was $1,450 in 2012, data on
the World Bank’s website show.

“The significance of protests is that they were not driven
by activists or politicians,” Magdi El Gizouli, a fellow at the
Nairobi-based Rift Valley Institute, said today by phone from
Freiburg, Germany. The movement “was spontaneous, real and took
everyone by surprise. It began in the country’s poorest
neighborhoods and included different age groups.”

Signed Petition

Thirty-one members and supporters of Bashir’s National
Congress Party signed a petition yesterday urging the president
to reverse the austerity measures, the Sudan Tribune reported,
citing a copy of the document. Demonstrators weren’t allowed to
“peacefully express their views in line with the
constitution,” the petition said, according to the newspaper.

Ahmed al-Sheikh, head of Sudan’s Doctors Syndicate, said
yesterday that at least 210 people have been killed since the
protests began. The Interior Ministry put the death toll at 33.

Bashir has ruled Sudan since coming to power in a 1989 coup.
The 69-year-old leader is wanted by the International Criminal
Court on charges of responsibility for genocide and war crimes
in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

Sudan’s economy shrank 4.4 percent in 2012 after newly
independent South Sudan took three-quarters of the formerly
united country’s oil output of 490,000 barrels a day. The
economy also endured a loss of revenue after South Sudan halted
crude production in January 2012 in a dispute over export fees
that brought the two countries to the brink of war.